"Five years after the storm, [Barry] O’Meara said that Sandy was the beginning of the end for the neighborhood. Then he corrected himself: 'There’s no such thing as a fucking end. But it was the beginning of something different.'"

"Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, offered a grim preview of Red Hook’s future. The storm, which devastated areas all over New York and left 43 dead in the city, hit Red Hook particularly hard. As water gushed out of sewers and into streets, parks and basements, residents were forced to remember that Red Hook used to be a tidal marsh and that old, hidden creeks still stream under the asphalt like veins under the city’s skin." (x)

"In Red Hook and Sunset Park, AECOM recently [in 2016] released a plan to place 30-50,000 units of new housing on the waterfront—25 percent of it affordable—as well as subsidize a new subway stop, and implement green and gray infrastructure for coastal protection and flood management. Arguing for the plan as a boost to Mayor de Blasio’s OneNYC ambition to build 200,000 affordable units by 2020, the proposal also runs counter to the idea of limiting exposure to areas of growing risk." (x)

"The truth is that with the seas around New York pegged to rise by several feet by the end of the century, there may be no truly long-term future for waterfront neighborhoods like Red Hook—at least, no future that resembles the present. 'The only answer is going to be to plan for the inevitable on sea-level rise, and that could mean retreat from the shoreline,' says Nicolas Coch, a coastal geology expert at Queens College in New York. 'But no one wants to think about that.'" (x)